“If you don’t make things for your own surprise, you become like a baker, everyday making the same round bread to sell.”

. . . . . . . . .

“In my first art show in Gallery Barbizon in Paris in 1952,
a gentleman walked in with a Leica M3 hanging like
a necklace around his neck.
After seeing my exhibition he asked me if i took pictures.
I told him that i did not like photography.”
He said “you see well, i can show you how to use my camera”

“I agreed and did exactly what he had suggested.
A fortnight later he invited me to his house for dinner to meet
his wife who had studied Bharat Natyam in India.
That eveningawakened my interest in photography
and also started a fiftyyear friendship
with a legend called Henri Cartier Bresson.”

. . . . . . . . .

“The emphasis is on public need, public economic status, increased and effective deliverance, reasonable price, infrastructural
sustenance, adoptive production methods, etc.
The design and production of products that follow this
design process helps the growth and development of the
country and its people.”

. . . . . . . . .

“An artist who can paint should also sculpt,
should have a feel for dance, music, photography.
Only then can you capture the light and the colour and the
sense of space that make up India.”

. . . . . . . . .

“Never let any established system constrain your imagination
and pursuit of what you believe in.
If you can dream it you can make it happen.”

. . . . . . . . .

In 1960 Dashrath landed in Prague to study industrial
ceramics with the famous Echart. And create art history
by turning ceramic logic on its head.

“I decide to learn from 200 mistakes rather than 200 recipes,” explains Patel.

Given set formulae for firing pottery, Patel settled on
subversion. “If certain colours were to be fired at 1,600
degrees centigrade, I open kiln at 1,200 to see results.
The result? I got 200 new colour palettes.”

. . . . . . . . .

Ranjeet Hoskote, art critic and writer, has this
to say of Dashrath’s collages:

“Patel celebrates the vivid, almost maddening vibrancy
of Indian street life, he dwells on the abstract possibilities of shape and hue afforded by the pure visual sensations.”